Harriet Burns & Rebecca Cohen - June 20th, 2025
The Programme
Harriet Burns (soprano), Rebecca Cohen (piano)
Song Recital - reflections on Human Nature.
Including works from:
- Schumann’s Liederkreis
- Lider by Schubert & Richard Strauss, and English Song by
- Copland, Ireland, Stanford, Britten et al.
Concert Programme
A programme of song exploring our profound, joyful, and sometimes adversarial
relationship to the natural world
Franz Schubert
- Rastlose Liebe
Robert Schumann
- Du bist wie eine Blume
- Meine Rose
- Er ists
Robert Schumann
Liederkreis op, 39
- "In der Fremde" I
- "Intermezzo"
- "Waldesgespräch"
- "Die Stille"
- "Mondnacht"
- "Schöne Fremde"
- "Auf einer Burg"
- "In der Fremde" II
- "Wehmut"
- "Zwielicht"
- "Im Walde"
- "Frühlingsnacht"
Interval -20 minutes
Aaron Copland - Nature, the gentlest mother
John Ireland - Sea Fever
Charles Stanford - Soft Day
Dorothy Parke - Song in Exile
Christopher Churcher - Sky Songs: There Will Come Soft Rains
Raymond Yiu - The forest hit by modern use
Anna Semple - I am not yours
James Wright - Quilled Sonnet
Cole Porter - Tale of the Oyster
The history of solo song goes back a long way, particularly if we go back to the days of the travelling troubadours and beyond. We might also count the solo arias in early opera and cantata, but that would be cheating. For our current purposes the solo song began with Schubert when, on October 19th, 1814, 3 months short of his 18th birthday, he composed “Gretchen am Spinnrade” – Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel. Here was the first “art song” – a melodic line in every sense in tune with poem (by Goethe) and a piano accompaniment that mirrored the text; the right hand spun the wheel and the left, the wheels pedal. Simple genius. Schubert went on to write more than 600 solo songs, including 2 cycles – Die Schöne Müllerin, and Die Winterreise. (The Beautiful Maid of the Mill – and The Winter’s Journey).
It is easy to say that thus, the German Lied was born and other composers followed suit. Not least Robert Schumann who, following his marriage to Clara Wiecke in 1840, composed prolifically, notably songs and song cycles, including Frauenliebe und Leben (Woman’s Life and Love) and Dichterliebe (A Poet’s Love). In 1840, Schumann wrote the second of his Liederkreis cycles, Op.39 which we will hear this evening. The poems are taken from the poet Eichendorf’s “Intermezzo” collection of verse. This cycle is regarded as one of the great set of songs of the 19th century, focusing on the “romantic experience of landscape”. Schumann wrote, “The voice alone cannot reproduce everything or produce every effect; together with the expression of the whole the finer details of the poem should also be emphasised; and all is well so long as the vocal line is not sacrificed.” To musical history, 1840 became Schumann’s “Liederjahr” – his year of song, the year in which he wrote a large number of Lieder.
What of Song in the English language? Here we can delve into a vast treasury of wonderful music. Harriet and Rebecca have selected songs from the living and the dead! Copland and Porter, from America, the rest from the UK. The English composers are young and promising with an already acknowledged reputation but all unknown to me. I eagerly anticipate the enjoyment of something new, in a genre, I admit, to be a favourite. (Having written quite a few songs myself!)
Programme Notes Copywrite Alistair Jones, 2025
Harriet Burns (Soprano)
"Brilliant and rich, comfortable even in stratospheric heights" (BBC Music Magazine), British soprano Harriet Burns is in demand for her "polished, witty, expressive and sweet toned" (the Times) singing both in recital and on stage. An acclaimed interpreter of song, Harriet has performed at Wigmore Hall, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Oxford International Song Festival, Leeds Lieder Festival, International Lied Festival Zeist, Ryedale Festival and de Singel with pianists including James Baillieu, Imogen Cooper, Christopher Glynn, Graham Johnson, Sholto Kynoch, Malcolm Martineau, Joseph Middleton, Ian Tindale and Michael Pandya. With her regular duo-partner, Ian Tindale, she released an album of Schubert Lieder Love's Lasting Power to critical acclaim with Delphian Records in January 2024, their next album with Delphian A short story of falling will be released in 2025.
On the operatic stage, recent roles include Berta (cover, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Rossini) for West Green House Opera, King Harald's Saga (Judith Weir) for Waterperry Opera, Sifare (cover, Mitridate, re di Ponto, Mozart) and Oriana (cover, Amadigi, Handel) for Garsington Opera, Sister Grace (The Angel Esmeralda, Lliam Paterson), Nerina (La Fedeltà premiata, Haydn), and Aminta (Aminta e Fillide, Handel) with Guildhall Opera. In concert, she has sung Thea Musgrave Songs for a Winter's Evening with the Southbank Sinfonia and Gabriella Teychenné, Handel and Mozart arias with Michael Bawtree at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, Bach Magnificat and Vivaldi Dixit Dominus with Nicholas McGegan and the Royal Northern Sinfonia at Sage Gateshead, Strauss Four Last Songs with the Oxford Millennium Orchestra, and Handel Messiah with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra.
Harriet is a laureate of numerous international competitions. Successes include 2nd prize and German Lied Award at 2022 Concours Musical International de Montréal (Art Song division) where she also won a Vocal Residency at McGill and Montréal Universities. In 2019, she was awarded 2nd prize at the Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera International Song Competition, the Compulsory Song Prize and Recital Prize at the International Vocal Competition in 's-Hertogenbosch and 1st prize at the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards at the Wigmore Hall. She is proud to be a City Music Foundation Artist, Samling Insitute Artist, and a Britten-Pears Young Artist. Harriet was a member of the Guildhall Opera School where she graduated with Distinction on the Artist Diploma programme and in 2023 was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.
Rebecca Cohen (Pianist)
Welsh pianist Rebecca Cohen is in demand as a collaborative pianist specialising in song repertoire. She has appeared in recital in the UK and Europe, partnering leading song performers including Joan Rodgers, Benedict Nelson, James Newby and Claire Barnett-Jones. Concert highlights include London’s Wigmore Hall, Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, National Concert Hall, Dublin and the Mozarthaus Vienna.
Recent and forthcoming engagements include a programme of song celebrating Charles Stanford’s legacy at the Great Hall, Belfast which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as part of the Belfast International Festival of Chamber Music, the world premiere of a BBC Radio 3 Commission by composer Ella Jarman-Pinto as part of International Women’s Day with soprano Nazan Fikret, and recitals in London, Wexford, Drogheda and Aldeburgh where she has recently been invited to curate a concert to mark Benjamin Britten’s birthday in November with tenor Ben Johnson.
Rebecca is Co-Director of Song in the City, an initiative which promotes classical song as an artform introducing it to new audiences through collaborations with performers from other artistic disciplines, commissioning new works and curating social projects.
Currently a member of professorial staff at the Guildhall School, Rebecca co-directs Creative Minds in Song; a project for postgraduate singers, pianists and composers together with writers in the community which inspires the co-creation of brand-new songs. The most recent world premiere performance took place at Milton Court, Barbican Centre, London.
Educated at the University of York, she completed her studies in collaborative piano at the Guildhall School and later at the Franz Schubert Institut in Austria. Competition successes include finalist in the Das Lied International Song Competition alongside soprano Nazan Fikret which featured in the BBC documentary ‘Becoming a Lied Singer: Thomas Quasthoff and the art of German Song’, the Lillian Ash French song prize and the Paul Hamburger Prize for accompaniment awarded by Graham Johnson as part of his prestigious Song Guild.
She is a member of faculty at Junior Trinity Laban where she teaches leads piano performance classes, and has run workshops and masterclasses for various organisations including EPTA and Wigmore Hall Learning.
Rebecca was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA) in 2015 and is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). She holds a PGCert in Performance Teaching in Higher Education.
